William Chang Suk-ping, born in Hong Kong on 12 November 1953 and known as 'Uncle', traces his family to Wuxi in Jiangsu and is a Hong Kong film editor, production designer and costume designer. Fond of drawing from childhood, he often went to the cinema with his parents and came to know directors from around the world through the film criticism of the Chinese Students' Weekly; he attended St Stephen's College Preparatory School and New Method College, studied for an art diploma in the University of Hong Kong's department of extramural studies, and read film production at the Vancouver School of Art in Canada, after which he first worked in fashion design before turning to art direction in the early 1980s. In 1985 he won his first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Art Direction with Yim Ho's Homecoming. From the late 1980s he collaborated over the long term with Wong Kar-wai, handling the art direction, costume design and editing of his films — among them As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, 2046 and The Grandmaster — and his visual style became a hallmark of Wong's cinema. His designs are meticulous, using colour, fabric and setting to evoke period atmosphere and emotion, while his editing is noted for rhythm and use of emptiness. Besides Wong, he has worked with directors such as Stanley Kwan, Patrick Tam, Yim Ho, Tsui Hark, Jiang Wen and Johnnie To. In 2000 he won the Technical Grand Prize at the 53rd Cannes Film Festival for In the Mood for Love and, at the 20th Hong Kong Film Awards, took Best Art Direction, Best Costume and Make-up Design and Best Film Editing for the same film; he later won Best Costume and Make-up Design again for Swordsman II, The Phantom Lover, Let the Bullets Fly and The Grandmaster, took Best Film Editing again for Chungking Express and The Grandmaster, and won Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design at the Asian Film Awards for The Grandmaster, collecting the Hong Kong Film Award more than a dozen times. In 2014 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for The Grandmaster, one of the few Chinese-language film artists to receive such a nomination.
Turning colour, fabric and setting into a language of narrative, William Chang shaped the signature aesthetic of Wong Kar-wai's films and carried Hong Kong art and costume design onto the international stage; his editing and styling have become an important reference point for visual style in Chinese-language cinema.
Achievements
- 1985 · Won his first Hong Kong Film Award for Best Art Direction with Homecoming.
- 2000 · Won the Technical Grand Prize at Cannes for In the Mood for Love and took art direction, costume and editing prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards.
- 2014 · Was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Costume Design for The Grandmaster.